Prior art extrusion methods to isolate a component material from the severing device by including the component material in filling material which is then completely enclosed in a coating material, depend on converging flow terminators to affect the desired intermittent flow of the filling material. These converging flow terminating methods, in the act of terminating the flow of a filling material containing component material not suitable to be severed or resistant to being severed, such as capsules, spheres, or cubed meat, either damage the component material, or become jammed, or do not seal completely when attempting to close on to the component material, thus resulting in an unacceptable high product scrap rate. A prior art method which encloses an easily severed material, within another easily severed material using a converging flow terminator, is taught by Svengren in U.S. Pat. No. 4659580. Apr. 21, 1987
To circumvent the problems associated with including component material that is resistant to being severed or is sensitive to being severed within an extruded and cut product, conventional methods use subsequent methods to add the component material to the exterior of an extruded and cut base of uniform consistency thus suffer from a number of disadvantages:
(a) The subsequent attaching of component material to the exterior of an extruded and cut base, either requires manual labor introducing quality variations, or costly devices that take up considerable space, and are correspondingly expensive to maintain.
(B) Attaching the component material to the surface of an extruded and cut base, does because of its nature, expose the component material to the elements, thus as in the case of a dough product with cubed meat as the component material, precludes subsequent sanitary cooking and packaging of the product.
(C) Attaching the component material to the surface of an extruded and cut base can expose the product to the entrapment air-borne pathogens due to the successive layering of ingredients as the product progresses forward by conveyor from one station to another.
(D) Attaching the component material to the surface of an extruded and cut base usually depends on uniform, dry, and non-sticky component material, thus limiting the materials and products compatible with the process.